Beyond “I’m Not Vegan Anymore”

In his wisdom, Donald Watson, when he coined the word vegan back in 1944,
addressed only the underlying motivation of veganism, which is
loving-kindness, and said not a word about fulfilling personal desires for
health, purity, or anything else. “Veganism is a philosophy and way of
living which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practical, all forms
of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals, for food, clothing, or any
other purpose…”

Our Earth is enormously abundant, and there’s plenty for everyone here to be
healthy and wealthy far beyond what we can imagine in our present
disease-ridden and impoverished culturally-imposed ignorance. Ironically,
the seemingly richest among us are often the sickest and most impoverished.

For those of us dedicated to embodying and advocating the vegan message
of compassion for all life, it’s always heartening when we witness someone
“getting it” and going vegan. Considering the pervasive indoctrination in
the opposite direction, this is no small feat, and a cause for rejoicing on
behalf of the animals, people, ecosystems, and future generations who are
profoundly benefitted every time someone goes vegan.

However, given the internal and external pressures on vegans, the
opposite can happen. Considering the urgency of our global situation, it
seems equally tragic when someone, for whatever reason, moves from vegan
living back to the mainstream. This was the case recently with Alex
Jamieson, somewhat well known as the author of Vegan Cooking for Dummies,
and Living Vegan for Dummies, and as the vegan significant other of Morgan
Spurlock, creator of Supersize Me. We can learn a lot from Alex’s example it
seems to me.

In her recent and controversial blog “I’m Not Vegan Anymore,” one of the
first sentences is, “13 years ago, when I decided to eat a vegan diet and
live a vegan lifestyle, I did it for my health.” This seems similar to
someone proclaiming they’re no longer in love and saying, “When I decided to
marry you, I did it for financial security.” Vegan living, like love, is not
about getting something for myself; it’s about giving: giving mercy and
kindness to others who are vulnerable in our hands. Going vegan to get
health is like getting married to get wealth: it’s typically not a lasting
motivation and it corrodes the integrity of our commitment. If we don’t
deepen our motivation beyond personal health, it’s easy to fall prey to the
“cravings” for an adverse affair of some kind—the bacon smells so enticing;
the neighbor is so attractive. Motivation is at the heart of both love and
veganism, as well as of our spiritual evolution.

Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against being healthy, or being
wealthy either. But we are taught from birth in our culture to get what we
want at the expense of others, and as a culture, this practice pervades our
lives. We use animals, ecosystems, and other people as mere means to our
ends, and chief among these ends are health and wealth. A steady supply of
pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures, meat, cheese, eggs wool, leather, and
other consumer goods all require inflicting suffering and death on countless
animals and often other people as well. We are injected with a cultural
program that instills in us the certainty that we are entitled to all this,
and that the suffering we cause others is trivial. We have created vast
industrialized systems that vainly attempt to assure our health, wealth, and
comfort at all costs as they devastate our planet and our fellow passengers.
The irony of course is that there is less genuine wellness and abundance
than ever because we fail to realize that we reap what we sow. To the degree
we question the cultural programming of exclusivity and privilege instilled
in us through our meals, we’ll see that the bricks in the road to health and
wealth for all of us are made of loving-kindness and inclusiveness. We are
all interconnected.

Veganism is love for all. It is essentially about giving, not getting.
The irony again is that as we do our best to bless others and assure their
health and happiness, we find our own health and happiness improving. As we
love fully and openly, we find our generosity increasing, and our wealth
naturally grows, and not just our financial wealth, but also the genuine
wealth of inner peace, joy, freedom, fulfilling relationships, and living a
life of creativity, service, and meaning. Our Earth is enormously abundant,
and there’s plenty for everyone here to be healthy and wealthy far beyond
what we can imagine in our present disease-ridden and impoverished
culturally-imposed ignorance. Ironically, the seemingly richest among us are
often the sickest and most impoverished.

In his wisdom, Donald Watson, when he coined the word vegan back in 1944,
addressed only the underlying motivation of veganism, which is
loving-kindness, and said not a word about fulfilling personal desires for
health, purity, or anything else. “Veganism is a philosophy and way of
living which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practical, all forms
of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals, for food, clothing, or any
other purpose…” Thirty-eight years ago, when I visited The Farm in Tennessee
and learned about the violence inherent in meat, I immediately stopped
buying or eating it, and have never desired it for a moment since then, and
in 33 years since learning about the cruelty inherent in dairy products and
eggs, and going vegan, I’ve similarly never desired or craved any
animal-sourced foods. In fact, they inspire revulsion, a sense of disgust
and sadness, and reinforce the joyful gratitude I feel for my vegan life.
There is nothing at all in this to take credit for, because it has taken
zero will power, and this is also true for most of the vegans I’ve talked to
over the years. As a side benefit, my health has been absolutely fabulous
these past 35 years—as has the health of my vegan spouse Madeleine as well,
and we see this is the norm, with vegans enjoying longer lives and suffering
far less from the chronic diseases that plague our population.

When we understand the consequences of our actions—the violence required
to obtain animal foods, from both factory farms and family farms, and also
the bigger picture in terms of the environmental, social, and
psycho-spiritual ramifications of participating in the consensus food
trance—we find our “temptations” and cravings quickly dissolve. With greater
understanding, they never arise to begin with. When we understand our true
nature and that of nonhuman animals, there is no inner battle, and our life
is congruent with our values. Animal-sourced “foods” are not foods at all,
actually. I remember many years ago an acquaintance asked me, “Don’t you
sometimes get the craving for a burger?” “I crave a burger about as much as
I crave to take a bite out of your arm, Russ,” I said. “A burger isn’t
food.” And of course neither is any flesh or cheese or egg, when we see it
and understand it for what it actually is, and how others are harmed. If we
were to see the freshly-killed corpse of an animal, we would not be
attracted, but repelled, and the farthest thing from our mind would be to go
over and actually eat it. Given the enormous abundance of appealing,
nutritious, flavorful fruits, vegetables, grains, and other plant-based
foods, there is something essentially perverse and even satanic about eating
cadavers.

So what are we to do when cravings like Alex wrestled with arise in us?
There are four essential understandings we can explore, cultivate and apply.

The first is what I’ve already been discussing: to make an effort to
remember what we are all pressured to forget and ignore—the suffering our
actions cause others: the imprisoned animals screaming and bellowing in
pain, terror, and grief; the cold misery endured by heart-hardened farm and
slaughterplant workers; the despair of millions of people hungry and
malnourished because nutritious grains and beans are essentially stolen from
them to fatten our livestock and farmed fish; the devastated oceans,
rainforests, rivers, landscapes, and free-living animals who are also
slaughtered and forced into extinction as their habitats are converted to
livestock range and feedstock farmland.

The second understanding is that if our body is yearning for nutrients,
plant-based sources can supply them. We do not need to imprison and kill
animals to get the nutrients that these animals get from plants! The more we
understand about nutrition, the more we understand that animals don’t create
any nutrients. Plants create all the essential amino acids that make up the
proteins we need. Through photosynthesis, plants also create all the healthy
carbohydrates that our bodies are designed to burn for fuel, as well as the
lipids that become the various fats (omega 3, 6, and 9, etc.). Plants are
the source of the seemingly limitless symphonies of phytonutrients that
researchers realize are so complex and beneficial that we will never,
through science, be able to understand them all. Plants are also the source
of all the minerals as well, pulling them from the soil, and of all the
vitamins with the exception of two: vitamin D, which is actually a hormone
we make by exposure to sunlight, and vitamin B-12, which is synthesized by
bacteria and destroyed unfortunately by modern industrialized methods of
water chlorination and industrialized produce washing. Both are available in
plant-based forms if needed. Thus, if we feel our body is craving a
nutrient, it’s important to understand that all nutrients are available from
plants in forms that are far less toxic and more easily assimilable than
getting them second-hand from animals. Also, it’s well understood that meat
and dairy have physically addictive components, like casomorphins, as well
as emotionally and socially addictive components, and simply “trusting”
cravings for these substances is like a person who wishes to heal their life
and be free of their addiction to alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs trusting
their body’s cravings for these substances.

The third understanding has to do with the energy of foods. At the
surface level there is the yin/yang energy of food and of all life, as
understood through macrobiotics and other systems. The principle in nature
is called enantiodromia, derived from the Greek enantio (“opposite”) and
dromia (“run”), meaning “running to the opposite.” We see this everywhere.
If any being or system becomes extreme in one direction, it will naturally
tend to return and move in the opposite direction. When it comes to food, if
we eat excessively contracting-energy (yang) foods, our body becomes tight,
and we naturally yearn for more expansive foods, and vice-versa. Our culture
indoctrinates all of us in a way of eating and living that has us typically
gyrating between the two poles of extreme yang (meat, cheese, and salt) and
thus craving extreme yin (sugar and sweets, fats, alcohol, tobacco,
caffeine, drugs), and then craving extreme yang again. The steak calls for
the cigarette, cocktail, or cake, the cheese for the wine and sweets, and so
it goes. Whole grains, vegetables, and legumes are much more balanced and
neutral, and tend to naturally eliminate the cravings that people who eat
processed foods and animal foods typically struggle with.

Besides the food cravings that come from being excessively contracted
and/or expanded (and these conditions can come not just though our food
diets, but also from the climate/environment we live in, as well as our
thoughts, feelings, and activities), there are other causes of craving. We
have sensors in our body that detect when we are satiated, having eaten
sufficient volume, and these sensors are designed for plant-based foods that
are naturally high in fiber. Eating animal foods that have no fiber, it is
easy to overeat fat, calories, and protein because the volume of these dense
foods is smaller, leading to obesity, constipation, acidification,
inflammation, and disease. We also have a second type of sensors in our body
that detect whether or not we are getting the nutrients we need. We can eat
large amounts of processed, nutrient-poor junk foods till we’re stuffed, and
still have cravings because nutrients are lacking. This is why it’s
important to eat a whole foods, plant-based, organic diet with a large
percentage of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, and other nutrient
dense foods. Junk food vegans whose hearts are in the right place for
animals unfortunately fall prey to this and end up hurting both themselves
and the cause of compassion by not understanding this, eating poorly, and
experiencing cravings. And vegan raw foodists can be plagued by food
cravings because their diet may make it difficult for them to get enough
calories to function optimally, so they find themselves hungry a lot. Eating
the complex carbohydrates provided by grains, legumes, squashes, and beans,
as well as vegetables and fruits, assures that we’ll have plenty of energy
and vitality.

At a deeper level, the fourth understanding that we can cultivate has to
do with the psycho-spiritual dimension of food and of our lives as
manifestations of eternal consciousness. Our relationship with food will
ultimately mirror our relationship with ourselves. How mindful and peaceful
we are around food reflects how aware we are in our lives, and how
harmoniously we are fulfilling our purpose in this lifetime. Looking deeply
into our relationship with food, and with food cravings, is the adventure of
looking deeply into ourselves. Do we just eat what we’ve been told to eat,
or what we think our body is telling us to eat, or do we make our own
choices?

J. Krishnamurti summed up the situation well when he said, “It is not a
good idea to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” We have been
continually bombarded with noxious messages from our culture since infancy,
forcing us to participate in meal rituals that are devastating to our
spiritual integrity as well as our psychological and physical health, and
the health of our society and our Earth. After injecting this toxic message
of cruelty, domination, and denial into our cells with every meal and
advertising message, we’re told to “trust our bodies” by this same culture!

The key to inner peace, joy, health, and freedom, not just for ourselves,
but for our culture, is questioning the indoctrinated food program we see
both around us and also arising within us, and making an effort to quiet our
minds so that we connect with the transpersonal dimension of our
consciousness.

By going vegan, we create a solid foundation for authentic spiritual
progress so that our mind can relax and open to its source, and we can
directly experience the truth that what we are is not a mere physical body
with a mind and personal history. We are not limited to this accumulation
that we self-identify with. We are life itself: eternal, infinite, free, and
of the nature of love, joy, creativity, and understanding. Our purpose is to
awaken directly to the truth that we are, and to discover and contribute our
unique gifts to our world in the brief and precious time that we are here on
this planet. When this awakening unfolds in us, we grow to love our life,
and to love all manifestations of life, and we see beyond the mere outer
forms to the radiant splendor shining within all expressions: people,
animals, communities—all are celebrations of one life, completely
interconnected and interdependent.

A deeper compassion arises that forever frees us from the delusion that
we can ever benefit from harming or using others. Our veganism is no long
“veganism.” It is our true nature spontaneously expressing as inclusiveness
and kindness for all living beings. We are simply living naturally, and our
greatest joy is contributing to the happiness of others. As vegans, we can
then say, “I’m not vegan anymore.”

My heart-felt best wishes go to Alex and all who call themselves former
vegans, because they are, in fact, pre-vegans, and we are all, certainly, on
the same path that leads to the unfoldment of the greater wisdom and
compassion that vegan living calls us to manifest in our lives both here and
beyond. And in a sense we are all post-vegans as well, because when we look
deeply into our pristine roots and the source of what we are, we see that
vegan living is actually remembering something we’ve been forced to forget,
but that we’ve known deep down all along. It’s an awakening from an imposed
delusion, and this awakening is ultimately inevitable for everyone. It is
returning home to our heart, to our real nature, to freedom, and to
compassion for all.

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